


Breathe

by electroniccollectiondonut



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Developing Friendships, Fluff, Gen, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Injury Recovery, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Canon, Queerplatonic Relationships, Sharing a Bed, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-18 08:07:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29855091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/electroniccollectiondonut/pseuds/electroniccollectiondonut
Summary: Aramis is seventeen years old when his world comes apart to the tune of crow calls and gunshots. It’s six months later when his new friends finally manage to pick up enough of the pieces to make him whole again. This is the story of the time between.
Relationships: Aramis | René d'Herblay & Athos | Comte de la Fère & Porthos du Vallon, Aramis | René d'Herblay/Athos | Comte de la Fère/Porthos du Vallon
Comments: 6
Kudos: 21





	Breathe

**Author's Note:**

> I have so many feelings about these three and the aftermath of Savoy. Also they're queerplatonic and there will be no convincing me otherwise.
> 
> Be warned, I mix show canon, book canon, and headcanon liberally and often, updates will be slow because the end of senior year isn't leaving me with a lot of time to write, and this fic has nothing to do with medical or historical accuracy and everything to do with feels.

Treville takes the smallest group possible to investigate at Savoy because he already knows what he will find, just himself and his two most promising recruits.  _ Remaining _ recruits, he reminds himself before that thought can even finish forming. He cannot ignore that he practically signed the death warrants for two-thirds of this year’s new musketeers, a bright eyed group of boys who, by and large, hadn’t even reached their majority yet. And now never will, because of him.

Porthos and Athos do not know that they’re riding into the scene of a massacre. They believe that they’re accompanying Treville to rendezvous with another group of new recruits. They accept this readily, because they have been given no reason to distrust him.

Treville takes a deep breath and cuts off that train of thought before it can go any further. He did what he had to for the good of France. No more, no less. He can hate himself for it on his own time.

He’s drawn even further out of his thoughts when Porthos and Athos gasp, almost in synchronization, as the ransacked camp comes into view directly in front of them. Treville counts twenty bodies, and he once again shoves back the tide of self-deprecating thoughts that threatens to drag him down. The good of France, he thinks. It helps, but only because it must.

“There were twenty-two men on this mission. We’re missing two bodies.”

Porthos and Athos both look disturbed, but Athos nods, a grim set to his mouth as he dismounts and walks into the trees. Porthos follows after a moment, weaving between bodies and collapsed tents with an determined ease born of a youth spent in the most notorious slum in Paris.

* * *

The grisly scene in the clearing is upsetting, certainly, but it’s not like Porthos has never seen a dead body before. Or a lot of dead bodies, or young ones, or ones that were killed violently. He grew up in the Court of Miracles, after all. So he follows Athos into the woods, moving deftly between bodies tinted blue with cold.

He makes the mistake of glancing down, once, and turns away, swallowing. It’s nothing he hasn’t seen before, but that doesn’t make it pleasant.

Athos is waiting for him at the edge of the woods. The two of them don’t know each other very well: Athos speaks with that distinct noblesse accent and Porthos is an ex-thief, and even when they’re in the tavern at the same time, they’re there for different reasons. Their only common denominator is that they’re both musketeer recruits. Still, Athos meets his eyes and takes a deep breath before turning around and walking fully into the trees, and Porthos doesn’t even have to think about it to know what he’s feeling.

They walk slowly. There’s no hurry, and neither of them especially  _ want  _ to come upon a dead body. They do anyway. The body looks like every other body here: a young man in a musketeer uniform, sitting against a tree a ways in front of them, caked in dried blood and skin blue with cold.

Athos freezes. Porthos follows his lead, not sure what he’s seen but trusting his judgement in this. Then Athos takes off at a dead sprint, not even slowing until he hits his knees beside the corpse. Porthos can hear his knees collide with the frozen ground, and winces in sympathy.

When Porthos reaches him a couple seconds later, Athos has his fingers at the corpse’s neck, searching for a pulse that he won’t find.

“Athos,” Porthos says gently, placing a hand on his shoulder. He doesn’t know what it is about  _ this _ corpse that has him so riled up, but the man is dead. Athos shrugs off his grip and hisses at him to shut up. He leans in very close to the corpse’s face, ear tilted toward the mouth.

There’s a moment where the entire world seems silent, waiting, then Athos screams, “Captain!” He’s already shrugging out of his cloak, tucking it around the man who is apparently not yet a corpse.

“He’s breathing,” he says at a normal volume, tone fierce, and then Porthos kneels down, offering up his cloak as well.

It takes only seconds for the captain’s running footsteps to approach them. He has his sword drawn, ready to fight whatever the threat is.

“He’s still alive,” Porthos informs him urgently.

* * *

Treville doesn’t even take the time to sheath his sword, just drops it on the ground. He recognizes the boy, Aramis, though he’s blue and there’s blood covering half his face. He’s one of the best of this year’s recruits, the best of those sent to Savoy, and though Treville was horrified at the idea of allowing any of his recruits to be killed, Aramis especially had given him pause.

The boy is the most relentlessly cheerful person Treville has ever met, bright smile charming everyone he comes into contact with. He never misses a Sunday service and he can talk his way out of almost anything. And he’s seventeen. Oh, most recruits are young, of course, and Aramis isn’t exactly new: he came to Paris last year, after his ex-fiancee miscarried their baby and vanished, and waltzed into the garrison asking what he had to do to earn a commission.

So Aramis has been a musketeer for nearly a full year, and he has more experience than most who were sent on this mission. But he’s still just a recruit. Recruits are supposed to stand parade and guard doors, not walk to their deaths. Not until they’re of age, and certainly not without a chance to fight back.

Treville is relieved, to say the least, that Aramis is alive, but he worries that it won’t be for much longer. He removes the cloaks they’ve wrapped around him to check for injuries other than the obvious one on his head.

“What are you doing?” Athos demands.

“Checking for injuries,” Treville says. “If he’s too severely injured, there’s hardly a point to warming him up.”

Porthos looks angry at that, and Athos’s eyes flash, though his expression is more controlled. He understands that they don’t want to let Aramis die if he’s not dead already, understands that they’re still too young to truly understand the decisions a soldier must sometimes make. But Treville is not an impractical man, and if Aramis’s injuries will be fatal anyway, it would be cruel to warm him up now.

It doesn’t take Treville long to catalogue all the injuries, many and varied though there are. The head injury and the chill are the most obvious, but there are also a handful of broken ribs, a gunshot wound to the thigh—the bullet seems to have gone cleanly through, thankfully—and various other scrapes and bruises. His shoulder and ankle look slightly worse than the rest of the background bruising, though he doesn’t think they’re dislocated or sprained, just bumped a few more times than the rest.

“Well?” Athos asks tersely.

“Alright,” Treville says after a moment of consideration. “Get him up. Gently, his ribs are broken.”

He’s still not sure if this is a good idea, if Aramis will even live, but it’s worth a shot.

Getting Aramis onto a horse, riding double with Porthos, is difficult, and it’s even harder due to the fact that he’s entirely unresponsive. They can’t tell if they’re jarring his injuries, though surely they must be, and every limb is a dead weight.

“There’s a town a few miles out from here,” Treville says. “We passed through it on the way. We’ll go there and rent a room for the night, and in the morning I’ll see about getting a carriage or a cart for the journey back to Paris.”

Porthos glances up for a moment from where he’s carefully arranging their cloaks to cover Aramis to meet Treville’s eyes, confusion writ across his face. “Wouldn’t it be quicker goin’ to Savoy?” he asks, and Treville is reminded that his latest academic pursuit has been geography.

Treville sighs and shakes his head. “Normally, yes. But this time…” he trails off, unsure how to explain without completely breaking their faith in him.

“Politics,” Athos realizes. Treville notes, not for the first time, that Athos speaks with the liquid drawl of the nobility and, when he’s not had too much to drink, there’s a calculative intelligence behind his eyes. There’s a story there, one Treville might look into one day, but for now he merely inclines his head in confirmation.

* * *

The trip into the town takes a little over a half hour, but it feels like longer, bundled up as Aramis is against his chest. He has to be extra careful not to jostle his broken ribs, since he’s not conscious enough to feel it, let alone complain, and he’s cold as ice, not growing any warmer even though he’s wrapped up in three winter cloaks. Not that Porthos really expected him to, but still, it’s worrying.

When they get to town, Captain Treville rents a couple rooms at the inn and helps get Aramis into clean clothes and bed, then goes for a doctor. Porthos and Athos are left with instructions to build up the fire, which they do. It isn’t long before the room is uncomfortably warm, and Porthos sheds the layers of winter clothes until he’s in just his shirt. Athos leaves the room for a moment, returning with a bowl of water balanced precariously on a stack of extra blankets. Porthos jumps up to take the bowl before it spills.

“Thank you,” Athos says, closing the door behind him with his foot. He sets to arranging the blankets around Aramis and tosses Porthos a few rags. “We should get him cleaned up.”

That’s what the water is for, then. He was wondering. Porthos wets a rag and wrings it out, and begins to gently wipe the blood from Aramis’s face. He’s careful, even though he knows Aramis can’t feel it, because it would feel wrong to be rough with this when Aramis already looks so fragile as it is. By the time the captain returns with the doctor, Porthos has managed to dislodge most of the dried blood. He looks almost worse this way, pale face mottled with dark bruises.

The doctor blinks, surprised, as he steps into the overwhelming warmth of the room. He takes off his coat and gives himself a moment to acclimate, then addresses Athos, sitting at the hearth tending the fire. “Get away from there, young man,” he says. “Where will your friend be if you make yourself sick with heat?”

“I don’t even know him,” Athos says, but he does as he’s told, coming to stand next to the bed.

The doctor examines Aramis and stitches the gunshot wound on his thigh—both sides, since the ball went straight through—and the gash on his temple, though it seems he’s doing it more to humor the captain than anything.

“Well?” the captain asks when he’s finished, not bothering to hide his anxiety.

The doctor sighs. “I very much doubt he’ll wake up. The concussion is severe and he’s been out in the cold for God only knows how long, and that’s not even mentioning the broken ribs.”

“He’ll wake up,” Porthos says.

“Again, I very much doubt it, but I won’t stop you from trying. Keep him warm and feed him soup. There’s not much else to be done but wait. And if he  _ does _ wake up, he’ll need you.”

“He  _ will  _ wake up,” says Athos this time, and for once Porthos actually appreciates the almost arrogant surety in his voice.

The doctor inclines his head, clearly not sharing their faith, and goes. Captain Treville sighs slowly, pinching the bridge of his nose. Porthos can sympathize somewhat. The captain surely didn’t expect  _ this  _ to come of their rendezvous with the training mission on the way back from Savoy.

* * *

“Take care of him,” Treville says tersely. “I’ll be back.” As he leaves, he’s careful not to let the door stay open for too long and let the heat out.

The inn staff are easily persuaded to lend him a shovel and lantern, because though it’s only midday, the sun sinks quickly in winter and he has twenty bodies to bury. He didn’t find the twenty-first.

Treville hates battlefield burials. It’s the worst part of being a soldier, in his opinion. Still, he rides back to the campsite, the massacre site, and starts to dig. The ground is frozen, but only for the first several inches; after that it gets easier.

He would like to be able to bury all of his musketeers individually, with headstones and name plaques. He would like to. But he would also like Aramis to make it out of this alive, and for that, they need to get back to Paris and get him a reputable doctor as soon as they can. So the fallen recruits are buried shallowly, two or three to a grave, and bad as Treville feels about it, he does his best to be quick.

It still takes hours, and it’s well past dark by the time he’s finished. His hands and face are numb from cold, and the rest of him is sweating from the exertion. When he returns once more to the town he’s got dirt on most of his clothes, turned to mud by the snow, and the innkeeper, a very old woman who would be almost his height if not for the hunch of her shoulders, practically demands that he take a bath. He hands over the extra coin without protest, and the woman sends her grandsons to fill a tub in his room.

After bathing, he gets dinner, and the cook, the innkeeper’s daughter, informs him that Athos and Porthos have already eaten and they took up a bowl of broth to try to feed to Aramis.

“Thank you,” he says. Then, “Do you know where I might find a wagon to borrow?”

She frowns. “What for? Don’t tell me you plan to travel with your friend in that condition?”

“We must. He needs a good doctor, and I can’t be away from Paris for the time it will take him to recover.”

Her frown deepens, but she nods. “I’ll make sure there’s a wagon ready for you in the morning.”

“Thank you,” Treville says earnestly, then heads up the stairs to check on Aramis.

Porthos is sitting at the head of the bed and Athos is on the floor, leaning on the mattress. Both are stripped down to their braies, watching over their unconscious charge despite the overwhelming heat of the room.

Treville sits down on the single chair in the room, then realizes why neither of them are using it when it creaks and wobbles ominously under his weight. He thinks better of his choice of seat and, like Athos, settles himself on the floor. “You two get out of this heat,” he says. “I can watch him until we leave in the morning.”

It seems to take a moment for this to register, but once it does, they both redress and go across the hall to the other room he rented. Sitting on the floor, watching Aramis lie there unmoving, Treville can’t help but wonder what became of the other missing recruit, the one whose pauldron he found in the forest. The one who deserted.

The night is long, made longer by the cloying heat and lack of activity. Shortly past dawn, when Treville is just about ready to break and switch places with Porthos and Athos again, there’s a knock at the door. It’s the innkeeper’s daughter, informing him that the wagon is ready. He thanks her again, and goes to wake Porthos and Athos.

* * *

Aramis is no longer cold in Porthos’s arms. He’s not warm either, but the icy chill from yesterday has receded somewhat, and that’s enough of a relief on it’s own. But he still doesn’t stir, and even bundled thoroughly in blankets the innkeeper had happily parted with when the captain had slipped her another coin, he would have a reaction to the change in temperature if he were well.

Getting him into the wagon is an exercise in patience, largely due to the aforementioned blankets, and also because of the townspeople crowding around curiously because musketeers rarely come this far from Paris except in emergencies, but they manage as quickly as they can, and the captain gets in as well, to get his turn at resting while Athos and Porthos get them started on the road home.

The journey is long and monotonous. The three of them take it in turns to sit in the wagon, watching over Aramis, during the day, and they all pile in together for warmth at night. The most notable parts of the journey are their early attempts at getting Aramis to drink soup and water, which end with more soup spilled than not, and blankets that will badly need a wash when they finally reach Paris.

Porthos also gets to know Athos fairly well, since the return journey with a wagon and injured charge is longer and in closer quarters than the ride there, and he discovers that behind the noble accent and the regular drinking binges, he’s a genuinely good person, if not a nice one.

They finally reach the city on the afternoon before Christmas Eve. When they reach the garrison, Athos and the captain both peel off, Athos to take Aramis’s blankets to a laundry and the captain to make his report and send for a doctor and inform the families of the recruits who didn’t make it home from the border of Savoy. The doctor arrives almost before Porthos can finish getting Aramis settled in his room, and he makes the same prognosis as the doctor in the village: he thinks Aramis is unlikely to wake. Porthos scoffs at that, and the doctor merely shrugs and goes to speak with Captain Treville.

The captain is in and out of the room, busy arguing with the doctor and making his apologies to the king for being gone so much longer than he expected. Porthos stays, and so does Athos, once he returns from dropping off the laundry. He tells Porthos about the fiery young woman he met while he was there, and Porthos can’t help but chuckle at his description of her reaction to being handed an armload of soupy blankets. He would crack a joke about love at first sight, but he doesn’t think he knows Athos well enough yet for such a thing to be well received.

In the early hours of Christmas morning, when Athos is well and truly asleep and Porthos is beginning to nod off himself, the captain comes in. He talked both king and cardinal around yesterday, and gave up on the doctor within mere hours, but he still has a regiment to run, and Porthos has the vague feeling that there’s also something more going on here than he’s saying. The captain sits on the edge of the bed and tells Aramis about the Midnight Mass, because Aramis is apparently quite religious.

When he’s finished, he looks at Porthos and sighs. “You two don’t have to be involved if you don’t want to,” he says. “I can handle this.”

“All due respect, Captain,” Porthos says, offering a smile that's equal parts grim and tired, “we’re already committed.”


End file.
